


The Blues Run the Game

by coyotesuspect



Category: Hustlers (2019)
Genre: F/F, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:28:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21842386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coyotesuspect/pseuds/coyotesuspect
Summary: The article's publication brings new opportunities. And new opportunities mean a new kind of hustle.
Relationships: Destiny (Hustlers)/Ramona Vega
Comments: 29
Kudos: 140
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	The Blues Run the Game

**Author's Note:**

  * For [another_Hero](https://archiveofourown.org/users/another_Hero/gifts).

> Happy Yuletide, another_Hero! I hope you enjoy
> 
> Title is from the song of the same name. Some details and concepts are taken from [the original article](https://jessicapressler.com/the-hustlers-at-scores/498) the movie is based on.
> 
> Content warning for allusions to past sexual assault.

A week after the article is published, six days after she calls Elizabeth to ask about Ramona, she’s in the backyard playing with Lily. It’s a real backyard, treeless and neat and still bright green from the sod Mason had laid down in the spring. They’ve been talking about putting in a hot tub, but Mason is concerned about the space they’ll lose for the barbecues they never throw. 

Lily keeps trying to cartwheel. She stands, spreads her arms, and then leans over until she crumples to the ground in a heap. Destiny can’t help but laugh every time. 

“Here,” she says, setting Lily back on her feet again. “Let me show you.”

She hasn’t done a cartwheel in years herself. It’s not exactly a killer move on the stage. But she used to do it all the time as a kid in Nan’s yard. She wanted to be a cheerleader for awhile, before she found out how expensive cheerleader uniforms are. 

It comes back to her easily. She lands on her feet near the high fence that provides the yard's only shade. Lily laughs, and Destiny holds her pose, arms spread out in a V. Then, from the other side of the fence, she hears a woman’s voice - her neighbor - low and conspiratorial, the end of a sentence: 

“...that trash next door.”

She freezes and leans closer to the fence. A man laughs in response. 

“I think it’s fucking hilarious,” says the man. 

“It’s not funny,” says the wife. “I don’t want that kind of woman around my kids. Her poor daughter…” 

Her voice drifts away, and Destiny hears the sound of a sliding door, the click of dog claws on concrete. They’re going back inside. 

“Mom,” says Lily. She tugs on Destiny’s shirt. “Mom, can you show me?” 

“Yes.” She makes herself focus on her daughter. She takes her hand and leads her away from the fence. “Come on. We’ll need lots of room.”

**

She thinks about telling Mason, but she doesn’t know how he’ll react, and she doesn’t know which would be worse: managing his anger or not having him defend her at all.

Besides, they don’t talk much about her past. She likes to let Mason think that he saved her. He’s trying to get her a job in pharmaceutical sales. He nods his head when she talks about maybe moving to California. He didn’t like that he’d only been mentioned off-hand as her fiance in the article. 

“They don’t know what I’ve done for you,” he’d complained, after reading it. 

“I don’t know, baby,” she’d said sorrowfully. She’d been thinking about what Elizabeth had told her about Ramona, about what Ramona had said about her. “I told Elizabeth all about you. I don’t know why you didn’t make it into the story.” 

**

She runs into the woman the next morning, as she’s loading Lily into her SUV on the way to school. 

“Good morning!” calls Destiny. 

The woman looks up, smiles brightly. She’s white, with the kind of boyishly short haircut white women get when they’re secure in their marriage. Destiny can’t count the number of guys who touched her hair while she was stripping and told her how they wished their wives would grow their hair out again.

The woman’s about forty, and she’s loading her own kids - twin boys - into her own SUV. The twins are a couple years above Lily at school. She must have had them late.

“Morning!” she says. She smiles. 

Bitch, thinks Destiny. She smiles back. 

“I’ve been thinking,” says Destiny, coming around the SUV so there’s no car between them, “I could drive the twins to school for you. Pick them up afterwards. I know you have to get to work, but me, you know, I’m just hanging around at home all day.” 

“Oh,” says the woman. The smile freezes on her face. “That’s very kind of you.” 

“Great!” says Destiny. “I can start tomorrow.” 

She steps into the car and closes the door behind her before the woman can respond, leaves her still smiling, as she backs out. 

She wishes she could tell Ramona about it. 

She holds that wish in her head on the drive to Lily’s school and back. It’s still inside her as she walks inside, to the pristine white walls and white carpet of her home. Mason let her do the decorating. Mason left hours ago. And without Lily, and without the expectation of a phone call or visit from Elizabeth, the house feels especially empty, especially hollow in its silence, its whiteness. 

She calls Ramona. 

**

“You didn’t!” says Ramona. She laughs in delight.

“You should have seen her face,” says Destiny. She’s grinning so hard her face hurts. Her chest hurts, too, a strange, small ache in her breastbone. 

“You’re not really going to do it, are you?”

“No. No! Ramona, her kids are terrible.” 

They both laugh again, and then their laughter fades into silence. It’s not uncomfortable, yet. But Destiny knows she’ll need to come up with a better excuse for calling than to complain about her bitchy neighbor. 

“I’m glad you called,” says Ramona. Her voice is the same - smoky and warm and familiar. Destiny shouldn’t be surprised. It hasn’t been that long. “I missed you, baby.” 

Destiny clears her throat. 

“I missed you, too,” she says tentatively. “Did you read the article?” 

“Yeah,” says Ramona. “We sounded pretty cool, didn’t we?” 

“We were pretty cool,” says Destiny. 

Silence again. Destiny wonders if they’re going to talk about it. About any of it. 

“You should come see me,” says Ramona, deliberately blowing past the possibility of a heart-to-heart, like a train that’s suddenly decided to run express, roaring through a local stop and leaving the platform rattling. You know it could have stopped, and you’ll remember it by its passing. 

“I’d like that,” says Destiny. 

**

She’s never been up to the Bronx. It takes her forever to get there from Nanuet. It’s gotten cold in the last week, autumn playing catch up and diving straight into winter. The sky spits hard, nasty grains of almost snow at her as she steps off the train and onto the platform. 

She knows, vaguely, that Ramona grew up in the Bronx. She wonders how Ramona feels about having to return. 

But if Ramona feels diminished by the homecoming, she doesn’t act it as she welcomes Destiny into her new apartment. She still has her own place at least - a one-bedroom with no view to speak of. But Destiny’s only able to take that in once Ramona releases her from an enveloping hug. 

“You look great!” says Ramona. She seems to second guess letting Destiny out of the hug and holds her face. “Look at you. Look at you! What is this mom haircut?” 

Destiny blushes. “The bangs made me look too young,” she says. 

“You are young,” says Ramona. She touches Destiny’s forehead, where her fringe used to be, and smiles softly. “I miss your bangs.” 

Ramona’s not dressed any way special - tight, lightwash jeans and Uggs and a pale pink zip up hoodie over a white camisole, silver hoops Destiny could wear as bangles. She’s dressed like half the girls Destiny passed on the way here, minus the puffy winter coat. 

But her face is still golden and ageless, and her eyes still eat oxygen like fire, and Destiny still feels like she’s the only other person in the room when Ramona looks at her. 

She is the only other person in the room, at the moment, but that doesn’t make Ramona’s gaze any less a miracle.

“How have you been?” Destiny manages to say. 

“I’ve been good,” says Ramona. She whirls away finally, to the tiny kitchen. Her hands hover over a tea kettle, and then she reaches up and pulls down a bottle of wine from the top of the refrigerator instead. 

It’s just past noon. Destiny will have to leave in a hour in order to get home in time to pick up Lily from school. 

She doesn’t say anything. She sits on the couch. It’s white and clean, but hard and thin. Ramona comes back in with two glasses of wine and hands one carefully to Destiny. 

“How’s Juliet?” 

“She’s good,” says Ramona. Her face is tilted towards her wine glass. Destiny can’t see her eyes. 

“Yeah? Is she - I know she was applying to colleges…” 

Ramona looks up, a familiar pride sparking in her face. “She’s at Mount Holyoke.” 

At Destiny’s politely blank expression, Ramona adds, “It’s in Massachusetts. I thought, you know, if you want to be in Massachusetts, maybe Harvard… Juliet could have gotten in if she’d applied. She’s so fucking smart. But, you know, Holyoke is an all girls school, and Juliet always grew up around women? I think she wanted to keep that. I really taught her to value that. And if she was somewhere like Harvard, she’d be around the kind of assholes we had to deal with, right? A bunch of Wall Street fetuses.” 

Destiny nods. Ramona sighs, and turns her body so she’s facing Destiny more fully. One arm goes over the back of the couch, and she touches Destiny’s hair.

“Does she like it?” asks Destiny. 

“I think so.” 

“What’s the campus like?” 

“It looked real pretty in the brochures.” 

“You haven’t been?” 

Ramona looks into the dark pool of her wine. 

“One of my sisters dropped her off. Juliet doesn’t want me to come visit her just yet,” says Ramona. She doesn’t say it sad exactly. More resigned. 

“How come?” 

“She’s ashamed of me,” says Ramona. She smiles, like she thinks it’s funny. Ramona’s a very good performer, but she’s not that good. “Can you blame her? Her mom’s a stripper. And a thief.” 

“You got her into that school,” says Destiny, cross suddenly on Ramona’s behalf. “She wouldn’t be there if it wasn’t for you.” 

“Nah,” says Ramona. “I’m not saying I didn’t help, but she’s smart enough she could have gotten there all her own. Besides, I get it, even if I wasn’t, you know, who I am, it makes sense she’d want some space. Figure out who she is.” 

Destiny doesn’t say anything. She gets that Ramona is blinded by that big, devouring world-eating mother love, but Ramona should still know better. Smart’s got nothing to do with whether or not someone gets a break, comes out ahead. It’s got everything to do with money. 

Instead, she puts her glass down and hugs Ramona. It’s awkward at this angle. But they figure it out fast. Ramona manages to set her own glass down and tugs Destiny into her lap. Destiny curls against her, rests her head on Ramona’s shoulder, and for a long moment, they just hold each other. 

“Do you ever wonder what woulda happened if you hadn’t left?” says Ramona. “Instead of, you know, going off with that guy, stayed in New York with me.”

Destiny laughs. “I was pregnant, Ramona. I wasn’t going to strip while pregnant.” 

Ramona shakes her head. She pushes Destiny’s hair behind her ear. 

“That’s not what I mean, baby.” 

“What do you mean?”

Ramona gives her a long level look. “I mean I would’ve taken care of you. Or even after you had Lily, when things got bad. Do you ever wonder what woulda happened if you’d just come to me?” She squeezes her arms more tightly around Destiny’s mid-section. “We could have been a family. You, me, Lily, Juliet.” She pauses. “Your grandma.” 

Destiny’s quiet. It is a nice thought. But it’s just that. The stock market still would have crashed. 

“I think we just would have gotten into trouble sooner,” she says. She wriggles free from Ramona’s lap. 

**

She thinks, sometimes, that if Ramona had been born a man, she’d have been Destiny’s easiest but least favorite kind of mark. The kind of guy who couldn’t help but look at you without hemorrhaging tears and cash, the “I just want to help you” guy. The kind of guy who doesn’t want to buy just your body, but also wants your love. 

Or maybe that’s mean. Maybe the impulse that drives Ramona to love every broken thing comes from a place of empathy, not pity. 

But Destiny isn’t broken, and she doesn’t need Ramona’s love. 

**

Three days later, she gets an email from a student at a university a couple hours north of the city. 

_We’re hosting our inaugural Sex Week, and we’d love to have you as a panelist! If you accept, you’ll be on a panel with two other sex workers for a (we hope!) lively and thoughtful discussion on the commodification of sex, the ownership of women’s bodies and narratives, and the future of sex work and pleasure in the era of late capitalism. _

_We’re a small organization, but we know how important it is to compensate women of color for their labor so we can offer a small stipend and pay for your train ticket...  
_

It’s a very small stipend. She almost doesn’t accept. 

“You should,” says Ramona, when Destiny calls to tell her about it. “It’s nothing big, but that’s how it is. You start small and then work your way up.” 

“It’s barely enough to pay for a sitter for Lily,” says Destiny. 

“Your boyfriend can’t watch her?” 

“He’s busy,” says Destiny. “With work.” 

There’s a pause, and then Ramona says, “I can watch her. It’s in a month, right? I can make sure I don’t have a shift.” 

Destiny does some quick math in her head. Even if Ramona’s only making minimum wage, she’d lose more money not taking a shift than Destiny will going to the talk. 

But Ramona’s right, too. Sometimes you have to lose money to make money. And it isn’t fair, either, how after the article came out, everyone lost their mind over it, Elizabeth is building her career on it, getting paid, getting offers, and all Destiny is getting is her neighbors’ scorn, someone spitting the word “trash” at her from behind a hedge. It’s Destiny’s story. She should be the one who gets paid for it.

“Okay,” she says finally. “Thanks.” 

**

There are two other women on the panel: a chubby white woman with dyed red hair that matches her lipstick, and a tall, black woman with a hard jaw and phenomenal posture. The white woman introduces herself as, “Kincaid. I’m an activist, sex blogger, and former camgirl.” 

She flashes a mouth of perfectly white, straight teeth. “And my pronouns are she/her/hers.” 

The black woman’s name is Marisha.

“I’m not a former anything,” she says with a winking smile at Kincaid. They seem familiar with each other. “I’m a current sex worker, and an organizer with,” she names an organization Destiny’s never heard of. “We’re working to decriminalize prostitution in New York City - ” Kincaid lets out a little, “You go girl!” - “My pronouns are she/her/hers.” 

She surveys the room and smiles gently. 

“Thank you all for having me. But I gotta say: Wow. I feel like the chocolate chip in the cookie.” 

The room - mostly white - laughs. 

“Oh,” says Destiny, when she realizes it’s her turn to introduce herself. She’s not used to being on stage in front of an audience of mostly women. She smooths her hand over her skirt and tries to think of what Ramona would say. 

“Hi, I’m, uh, Destiny. I used to be a stripper in New York City.” She’s not sure if she’s supposed to address the article, her alleged crimes. That’s probably why they invited her, she realizes. But she feels weird addressing it, weird in a way she can’t explain to herself in that moment. With Elizabeth, it felt like a straightforward transaction. She’d get her story out, and Elizabeth would be able to publish something. She doesn’t know what the exchange is here. It’s not like the audience will throw her dollar bills. 

“I, uh, got in some trouble and there was an article about it. Maybe you all read it,” she chooses to say, smiling, so they’ll think she’s playing coy. There’s a breaking swell of laughter that lets her know she was successful. “But I’m not doing anything cool right now like these ladies.” She gestures at her co-panelist. “I’m just spending time with my daughter.” 

“Motherhood is real work,” interjects Kincaid. She has a round, polished voice, and the audience murmurs its approval. 

“Yes,” says Destiny. She tries not to frown at the interruption. “Thank you.”

There’s a pause when she’s done speaking, and then the moderator - a skinny girl with a nose ring - prompts, “Your pronouns?” 

“Oh! I’m a girl. Sorry - a woman.” 

There’s another beat and then the moderator says, “Great! Well, thank you all for being here. Let’s get started!” 

She’s lost basically immediately. Kincaid gets most of the questions and does most of the talking. Destiny feels like she’s been asked to help teach a class in a subject she’s never taken. For the first ten minutes, she’s frozen and smiling as Kincaid and the moderator talk about something called the subaltern. Marisha brings the conversation back to her organizing a couple times, which Destiny appreciates because at least that’s something concrete, something she can understand, even if it’s not a topic she can contribute to. 

Finally, the moderator seems to take pity on her and asks,“Do you feel like stories like yours contribute to the stigmatization of sex workers? What do you think a more positive media portrayal of sex workers would look like?” 

“Stigmatization?” repeats Destiny. 

The moderator pauses. “Makes sex workers look worse, like - ”

“I know what stigmatization means,” interrupts Destiny. Her face feels hot. “I just don’t like the question. You’re saying like it’s my fault if someone thinks strippers are trash because of that article? People already think that.” 

“Which is why we have to be conscious about how our stories are portrayed in the media,” says Kincaid, like the question was directed at her. “It’s important that we empower ourselves to claim our own narratives. As sex workers, - ”

“Why do we keep saying sex workers?” says Destiny loudly, talking over Kincaid. “What does that even mean? Why aren’t we specific? I just stripped. I never had sex with anyone. I wasn’t a hooker. I never did that.” 

The room goes silent. 

“Well, I have,” says Marisha.

Kincaid leans forward, her face serious. 

“I really think,” she says, her round voice heavy with sorrow. She doesn’t look at Destiny. She looks at the audience. “That it’s such a shame when even sex workers fall prey to the whorearchy.” 

The crowd murmurs its approval again. Several of the white girls start snapping. Marisha arches an eyebrow.

“I didn’t mean,” says Destiny quickly. “I didn’t mean there’s something wrong with it. I’ve just never done it. But we all have to do what we have to do to survive, right?” 

Kincaid stares at her frostily. 

“For many of us, sex work isn’t about survival. _It’s about choice_.” 

**

Destiny follows Marisha outside at the end of the panel. Kincaid stays at the front of the room, mobbed by fans.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I didn’t mean to…” She trails off. 

Marisha lights a cigarette and leans against a wall, next to a “smoke free campus” sign. They’re posted all over the place. She studies Destiny’s face for a moment that would be long enough to make most people squirm. But Destiny’s used to being scrutinized. She gazes back evenly, but she’s careful to keep her expression apologetic. 

Marisha flicks a little ash off the end of her cigarette. 

“Don’t worry about it,” she says coolly. 

“It took me by surprise, is all,” says Destiny. “I’ve never done this before.” 

Marisha looks at her like that’s obvious, and like she wants Destiny to just give her five minutes alone to smoke her cigarette. Destiny knows she should do just that, but she still feels the need to explain herself, to show Marisha she’s on her side. 

“I wasn’t, like, totally honest,” she says. She looks at her hands. “There was once…” she says, in stop-start fashion. “I took a break from the club after my daughter was born, and then I came back.” 

She doesn’t tell it the way she did to Elizabeth. She doesn’t need to pretty it up. She doesn’t need to overly explain it. 

When she’s done, she finally looks back up at Marisha. She can feel tears sliding down the sides of her face, but she keeps her expression perfectly still. She can’t keep herself from crying, but she can keep from humiliating herself more. 

Marisha’s expression is calm and still. She has her cigarette in one hand, and her other hand cups her elbow, so that her arm forms a bar across her chest. She doesn’t look unsympathetic.

“They don’t want to hear that shit,” she says, jerking her chin back towards the classroom. “They want you to tell them it was empowering.” 

** 

Destiny finds Kincaid’s twitter on the train ride back to the city. It’s full of acronyms Destiny has to look up the meaning of, words like “fourth-wave” and “consciousamory” and “kyriarchy,” and several half-naked photos of Kincaid. 

There’s also a Paypal link in her profile, and Destiny guesses it’s there because people send her money. 

_Had a great time at Vassar Sex Week!_, she’s tweeted. _Thank you to the organizers! We’re ALL safer when we work to destigmatize sex work and dismantle oppressive power structures!_

It’s total gibberish. It’s a performance. It’s already been liked over a hundred times. 

**

She shows Kincaid’s twitter to Ramona a couple days later. 

“People just send her money for talking shit on the internet,” she says. 

“For real?” says Ramona. She takes the Destiny’s phone and scrolls through Kincaid’s twitter. 

“This is just nonsense and nudes,” she says after a moment. 

“Exactly,” says Destiny. She takes the phone back. “We can do this, too.” 

** 

They take an online social media seminar together. It takes most of the stipend Destiny made from the panel, but they figure it’s an investment. It’s not like either of them have any other great opportunities lined up. 

Ramona takes a photo of her to use as her profile picture. She needs to look sexy, but also smart, not like the suburban mom she’s been pretending to be.

“It’s a good thing you’re Asian,” says Ramona, as she repositions Destiny so the light falls only over one side of her face. “People are already gonna think you’re smart.” 

Destiny laughs. “I dropped out of high school,” she says, which Ramona knows. She used to get a lot of questions about why she was so bad at math. Though it turns out she’s great at math when it matters.

Ramona holds her face, squeezing lightly so Destiny’s lips form a pout. 

“I know,” she says, smiling fondly. “But you’re still smart.” 

**

A few days later, Ramona drops a stack of printed out articles in front of her. They’re thick enough to be a book. 

“Juliet says we should read these,” she says.

“Juliet?” says Destiny. She looks up from the first article. It’s called “Feminism 101.” 

Ramona carefully doesn’t look at her. “We’re talking again,” she says casually. “I told her about what we’re thinking of doing.” 

“And?” 

“She likes that we’re educating ourselves, you know?” 

“Educating ourselves,” repeats Destiny. 

Ramona raises her eyebrows. Destiny shrugs. 

“It’s just, like, it's our lives, you know?” says Destiny. “It’s like we’re educating ourselves to talk about our lives.” 

**

She starts following people, like the social media seminar said she should. A few days later, Kincaid follows her back. 

**

She gives three more talks over the next couple months, all universities. She doesn’t fuck up like she did the first time, even if she’s not as good at the professor drag as Kincaid was. She talks a lot about sisterhood instead, about how empowered she felt running her own business. 

Her twitter count grows, mostly women, but some men, and her replies are a mix of lockstep affirmations and requests for nude pictures. After a few weeks, she puts up a Paypal link. After a month, she’s made fourteen dollars from it. 

**

So it’s not a lot of money, and it’s a lot of fucking work. She’s constantly talking to people, constantly reading books and articles that make her feel like she’s learning a foreign language. 

And the work follows her. At least when she was stripping, she could go home and take a shower. Now, she wakes up in the middle of the night, and she feels like she has to go online, respond to someone or tweet something or read something.

And it was like that, sort of, when she and Ramona were running their “criminal enterprise.” The work followed her then, too, but at least she was making money. 

“Women never pay as well as men,” says Ramona when Destiny complains about it. 

“Maybe I could be, like, an inspirational speaker,” says Destiny. “Like that wolf of Wall Street guy. How come people give him so much money?”

Ramona snorts. “Come on. You know why.” 

“The white hetero-sexist patriarchy,” says Destiny, straight-faced. Ramona laughs. 

“Yes,” she says, nodding. “Yes. Baby, you should tweet that.” 

Destiny laughs, and she does. It’s not a lot of money, and it’s a lot of fucking work, but it’s a nice excuse to see Ramona again, too. And maybe since it’s not so much money, things won’t get as crazy as they did. It’ll be easier to get off the ride. 

** 

In May, Mason puts off their wedding again. 

“It’s just my family,” he says. “They were warming up to you, and then that article came out…” 

“They don’t like that you’re dating an ex-stripper,” she says. 

“They don’t know you like I do,” he says, pouting. “But, like, you’re hanging out with your stripper friend again. And are you going to want her at the wedding?”

“Ramona hasn’t stripped in ages,” she says, prickly. “She’s helping me with my business.” 

“Babe, you don’t have a business. You’re just on the internet all day.” 

“At least I’m not just a glorified chauffeur like your sister,” she snaps. “I’m actually trying to do something with my life.” 

Mason puffs up like a bird. 

“What the hell does that mean?” 

“She doesn’t fucking do anything except drive her kids to school and soccer and tutoring or whatever. Wasn’t she, like, a lawyer or something?” 

“She and Zach agreed it made sense for one of them to stay home with the kids - ”

“How come it’s always ‘makes sense’ for the woman to be the one to stay home?” 

Mason splutters through several responses, then throws his hands skyward. 

“What are you even talking about? You don’t even like my sister.” 

“You’re an asshole,” Destiny informs him. 

She storms to their room, slamming the door behind her, and throws herself on the bed. She’s grateful Lily’s on a playdate. She hates arguing in front of Lily. She and Johnny used to do it all the time. 

She thinks about calling Ramona, but when she looks at her phone, she sees that she’s missed a call from Elizabeth. 

Elizabeth picks up on the second ring. 

“Destiny,” she says warmly. “Thanks for calling me back. How have you been?”

“Good,” says Destiny. She presses her hand to her face. It’s dry, and she’s satisfied by that. She hasn’t cried because of a man since she kicked Johnny out. She has no intention of letting Mason be the man who changes that. 

“I’m good,” she repeats. “And Lily’s good. She’s reading now. Above her grade level, even.” 

“That’s great!” says Elizabeth. “Um, I’m actually calling because I have a favor to ask.”

“Oh?” 

“I’ve been invited to speak at Columbia - at their journalism school. It’s sort of like a talkback series? Basically, they invite a journalist to present on an article they’ve written, about their process. I’ll be talking about your article, and I thought it would be great to have you up there with me. Is that something you’d be interested in?” 

“Is it paid?” asks Destiny. 

She can sense from Elizabeth’s silence that she’s taken aback by Destiny’s bluntness. But Elizabeth recovers quickly. 

“I can ask,” she says. “We can probably arrange a stipend…” 

“Great!” says Destiny brightly. “Call me back when you know.”

**

It’s still a college classroom, but the audience is more mixed. Actual adults, professors. There’s a wine and cheese spread afterwards she’s been told. 

Ramona isn’t in the audience, because Ramona is watching Lily again. 

“It’s an honor to be here with Destiny tonight,” says Elizabeth in her opening statement, in her kind, therapist voice. “Destiny was a very active source - “ the room breaks into knowing laughter, and it sort of feels like the first time she read the article, that same sense that maybe she was being laughed _at_ \- “and I’m very pleased that we’ve managed to stay in touch. I think one of the things that surprised me most about the process of writing this article is that I would come to consider Destiny my friend.”

Friend. That surprises Destiny. She likes Elizabeth. Really, she does, but she’s also pretty sure Elizabeth is never exactly going to invite her to her Christmas party. 

It’s actually pretty pleasant, though. It feels a little bit like they’re back in Destiny’s living room, and the questions are easier this time, mainly about the process of being interviewed rather than a total rehash of the subject matter. 

“What’s changed for you since the article was published?” asks Elizabeth, as the hour winds down. 

“Well, I’m in touch with Ramona again.” She smiles at the audience. “My, uh, business partner.” 

“Uh oh,” says a man’s voice from the audience, and a chuckle ripples through the room. Destiny chooses not to acknowledge it. 

“I think what Elizabeth really helped me realize was that this wasn’t my story, it was _our_ story, mine and Ramona’s. It’s a story about sisterhood. She actually was the one who encouraged me to reach back out.”

Elizabeth beams. “You have a very active online presence now, as well. I’ve been reading your twitter, and it’s struck me that you’re much more - ” She catches herself, and Destiny wonders what word Elizabeth meant to say. “You’re much more engaged on the topic of social justice. What inspired you to educate yourself?” 

“Well… my life,” says Destiny brightly. “Growing up, I didn’t know anyone who considered themselves a feminist. But I have a daughter. I want her to grow up knowing she has as many opportunities as a boy does. But I also - I needed to learn this stuff for me, to explain why my life has turned out the way it has.” 

During the Q and A, a silver-haired woman in a dark purple scarf steps up to the mic. She looks like the kind of woman who’s always getting thanked for her donation. 

“You should be ashamed of yourself,” she says, addressing Destiny directly. The whole audience seems to take one large breath, and Destiny feels her smile freeze on her face. 

“I’m sorry,” says Elizabeth, recovering first. “Is that a question?” 

The woman ignores her. 

“You didn’t just hurt those men. You hurt their families. Their children. Their wives. How dare you sit on this stage and say it was a feminist act. It’s women like you who give feminism a bad name.” 

“I’m sorry,” says Destiny, in a high, little girl voice that she hates herself for. Ramona would know what to say in response, but Destiny’s too stunned. Probably she shouldn’t be, probably she should have been expecting something like this to happen. 

“I think we should move on to the next question,” says Elizabeth. 

Whatever the next question is, Destiny doesn’t hear it. There’s just a loud roaring in her ears. 

**

When Destiny leaves the stage, she realizes she’s crying. She doesn’t stop crying until she gets home. 

“Destiny!” says Ramona, rising from the couch. “Baby, are you okay?” 

“No,” says Destiny, and she starts to cry even harder.

And she can’t even explain why she’s not. There’s a sucking wound inside her. She can’t ever seem to get it to heal. 

“I’m like a freak,” she says. “I’m just a freak show to these people.” 

“You’re not a freak,” says Ramona. “You’re not a freak.” 

She pulls Destiny against her chest, and then leads her into the bedroom, makes Destiny sit on the bed and take deep breaths until she’s no longer hysterical. 

“Lily’s asleep,” says Ramona, handing Destiny a glass of water. “And you should get some sleep, too.” 

“Where’s Mason?” says Destiny. She swallows hard. “He was supposed to be home…” 

Ramona grimaces, then shrugs. “I don’t know. Probably the same place all the other assholes go.” 

Destiny nods. She swallows hard. Her head hurts. 

“Don’t go just yet,” she says. Ramona looks at her. She doesn’t say anything about work the next morning, or having already been here for hours past what they agreed to, or needing to get home. She just nods and lies down beside her. 

“You wanna talk about it?” asks Ramona, half an hour or so later. She rubs Destiny’s back. 

Her face feels tacky from the tears. She must look terrible. 

“I just feel like… I’m smart. I’m really smart, you know? I was basically CFO of my own business. But I’m not getting offers because I’m smart. I’m getting them because people want - I don’t know. I shouldn’t just have to get naked to make money, is what I meant. Or talk about how I used to get naked to make money! It’s the same shit. They buy you, so they think they know you.” 

“So don’t do it anymore,” says Ramona. “Do something else. Like, I’ve been wondering, why are you even doing this? You don’t need the money.” 

“I can’t just rely on Mason,” says Destiny. 

“That’s for sure,” says Ramona, snorthing. “He won’t even watch Lily.” 

“He’s busy!”

“With what?” 

Destiny scowls. 

“Whatever happened to your swimwear line?” 

“What does that have to do with anything?” 

“You can’t get anyone to help you finance it any more, right? 

“So?” 

Destiny sits up, and Ramona sits up, too. They face each other. 

“So that’s what I mean! No one cares about what we can do! They just care about using us to feel better about themselves or something. They think they know us because they read about us. And we can’t fucking get away from that.” 

“So we could write a book,” says Ramona. “You know, set the story straight.” 

Destiny looks at Ramona. Her face is thrust forward slightly, her eyes gleaming. It’s a familiar, money-scenting look.

“We’re not going to write a book,” she says. “We don’t know the first thing about writing a book.” 

“We can find someone who knows how,” says Ramona, undaunted. “A ghostwriter. But it’ll be our names. Our story. Not some reporter with a Target purse.” 

Destiny’s quiet. It’s not the story that was wrong, she thinks, it’s how everyone’s responded to it. Writing it her own way won’t make her feel any less like she’s performing herself for an ungrateful audience. 

“You said yourself that you were fucking smart,” says Ramona, filling the space of Destiny’s silence. “You can run a business, you can write a book.” 

“That’s not… It’s still, like, selling myself.” 

“We’re all selling ourselves,” says Ramona. “Even those fucking Wall Street assholes are whoring themselves.” 

Destiny rolls her eyes. “Because you always have it all figured out. You’re not the one getting on stage, pretending to be - ” She doesn’t even know what she’s pretending to be, victim or heroine or villain or academic or wide-eyed innocent. 

“You know what your problem is?” says Ramona. “Your problem is that you want to be safe. But that doesn’t exist. You think, you get enough money, you lock yourself up in the suburbs, you find a man who’s dumb but not too dumb, who’s sweet on you and doesn’t ask you for much — you think you’ll be safe. That nothing’s ever gonna touch you again. But that’s not true. You know that’s not true.” 

“You don’t know me,” protests Destiny. “I’m not — ” She makes a sharp, violent gesture, as if to indicate all the women she detests. “I’m not like your other girls. Your fucking — the cokeheads and hookers. I’m not like them, so I don’t know what you want with me. You can’t ‘fix’ me.” 

That’s enough to make Ramona stop talking over her, to actually look at her.

“You aren’t broken,” says Ramona. “I don’t want to fix you. What makes you think I want to fix you?” 

Destiny’s read enough psychology textbooks to know why she’s like this. It’s because her mom left her. It’s simple. She was abandoned, and so she feels like she doesn’t deserve love, and so she lashes out. It’s neat and sad. Her lawyer said something like that when working out her plea deal - words like “leniency” and “mitigating factors.” And she got the sense when talking to the court officer who put together the report her sentencing judge looked at that the deeper she dug for trauma, the more “lenient” the judge would be. 

She got the same sense when she was talking to Elizabeth for the article. The more she gave of herself, the more she revealed, the softer the audience would be. Most people don’t really want to crush you; they just want to know they _could_. 

People don’t like women who do bad things unless they were traumatized first. They don’t understand it. A woman’s gotta be a victim to be a villain. You either get punished before or you get punished after, and people like to know a woman’s gotten her lumps in early. 

But the thing is: Destiny’s mom did leave her, and maybe everything has been a little crooked for her since. 

She wasn’t good enough to be loved by her mother. And who isn’t loved by their mother? Destiny had taken one look at [her baby] and known immediately she would do anything for her. And, yeah, maybe that says more about Destiny’s mom than Destiny, but it doesn’t make it hurt any less. 

So her mommy didn’t love her and everyone else who’s loved her since wasn’t willing to do it without taking a piece of her. 

Everyone except her grandma. 

Everyone except Ramona, whose love seems to pour out of her in an unstoppable flow, sweeping everything and everyone up in its path, and smoothing them to a fine polished stone. 

When she visualizes a place of safety, what she really wants, what would be enough, it is somehow, always, Ramona’s apartment the first time she saw it. 

“You didn’t pick up,” she says. 

“What?” 

“When that guy - your client, the one Mercedes was with, who got injured. You didn’t pick up. I kept calling you, but you were bailing out that fucking crackhead. Dawn.”

“She needed help - ”

“So did I!” 

She claps her hands over her mouth, surprised. She hadn’t meant to shout. Ramona stares back at her. She doesn’t say anything, though, and the words keep spilling out of Destiny’s mouth, through her hands. 

“And then Nan died, so we never - we never really talked about it. But I couldn’t trust you after that. I couldn’t - ”

“I messed up,” says Ramona. She holds Destiny’s face in her hands and presses their foreheads together. “Baby, I messed up.” 

“And then,” says Destiny, almost hysterical for the second time that night. She yanks her face out of Ramona's grasp. “I didn’t think - I took the deal for Lily. But also because I didn’t know if I could rely on you. I didn’t know if I could trust you.”

“You can,” says Ramona. She’s crying now, too, and she lets her whole face cry with her. Her beautiful, smooth face is crumpled now. “I promise, you can.” 

Destiny kisses her. It’s messy and wet and instinctive. Ramona kisses back without hesitation. She pushes Destiny back down onto the bed. Destiny cups the back of her head and keeps kissing her. She didn’t know she wanted to do this until she was doing it. But it makes sense, and for the first time all night, Destiny’s mind feels clear. From the first moment she saw Ramona, she’s wanted to be as close to her as possible. She would have lived in Ramona’s shadow if she could have. Suddenly, she starts to laugh. 

Ramona pulls away. Her lips are red, one strand of hair falls from her face and trails against Destiny’s cheek. 

“Are you okay?” 

“Yes,” says Destiny. “I just - I’m so stupid. Honestly.” 

Ramona looks at her, fond and amused. 

“You’re something,” she says. She kisses Destiny’s neck, the v of her chest revealed by her shirt. She shakes her head. “You sure are something.” 

She moves further down Destiny’s body, and Destiny realizes what Ramona is planning to do. She breathes in sharply, and Ramona pauses, looks up. 

“You sure you’re okay?” 

Destiny nods. Her throat is dry. “I’ve never - ”

“Never what?” 

“No one’s ever…” She doesn’t know why she’s embarrassed to say it. “Never gone down on me.” 

Ramona’s quiet for a long moment. Her hand is curled around Destiny’s leg, and she gently strokes the soft skin behind Destiny’s knee. Destiny shivers. 

“You’ve dated a lot of assholes,” says Ramona finally. 

Destiny can’t really say anything to that. She touches Ramona’s cheek and asks softly, “You’ve been with women?”

“Women, men.” Ramona grins in her sharp, familiar way. “Every body is beautiful. Men are just usually more willing to pay.”

Destiny laughs. Her skin prickles with heat. It’s not like it’d be that different from what they did together at the club. It’s nothing they haven’t pretended to do. And, honestly, Destiny always liked grinding on Ramona better than she did on the men. 

“We don’t have to,” says Ramona. She’s still tracing circles on the back of Destiny’s knee. “I just think you deserve to have someone treat you right for once.” 

Destiny takes a deep breath and nods. 

“I want,” she says. “I want to.” 

Ramona spreads Destiny’s legs slowly. 

There’s no dancing, no music, no lingerie. Ramona is in a hoodie, her hair pulled back in a ponytail. She shoves Destiny’s skirt up. Heat throbs in the pit of Destiny’s stomach. Ramona presses her face against the thin skin of Destiny’s thigh. Her cheek is still damp from her tears. It makes Destiny shiver, and it takes a long time for the shaking to stop. 

**

They both wake up a little after three, when Mason flicks the lights on. They’re both still dressed, though Destiny’s panties have ended up in a crumpled ball under the bed. Ramona’s arms are around her waist, and she breathes warmly and damply against the back of Destiny’s neck. 

“You’re still here,” says Mason, slurring and bewildered. He sways a little. Destiny can smell the cigarette stink of him from here. 

“Yeah,” says Ramona, and there’s a sudden cool press of air against Destiny’s back as Ramona rolls away from her and gets off the bed. “You never showed up.” 

“I got caught up at work,” says Mason sulkily. 

Destiny doesn’t even give Ramona the chance to respond to that. She sits up.

“Let me make up the guest room,” she says.

“Nah, I’ll just get an Uber,” says Ramona. She walks around the bed and eyes Mason. He’s still standing in the doorway. “I should get home.” 

Destiny nods. She doesn’t like the way Mason keeps looking between them. 

“Thank you,” she says, “for…” 

“We should have a threesome sometime,” blurts out Mason. “The three of us.” 

“You’re drunk,” says Destiny. Ramona doesn’t say anything. She just looks at Destiny and raises her eyebrows a little, smiles a little, knowing and sad. 

“I’ll call you,” mouths Ramona, and she ducks past Mason without letting him touch her. 

**

Destiny calls Elizabeth later that morning. Mason’s still sleeping off his hangover. Her phone is cool against her cheek. Sunlight pours into the backyard, where Lily is turning cartwheels by herself. Destiny watches her through the sliding glass door.

“Destiny?” says Elizabeth, when she picks up. “Is everything all right? You ran out pretty quickly last night…” 

“Oh, sorry about that,” says Destiny breezily. “My babysitter told me Lily was running a fever, so I ran home to check on her. She’s feeling much better now though.” 

“Oh, I’m - that’s good. I’m glad she’s better.” She can hear the curiosity in Elizabeth’s voice. She takes a deep breath. 

“But, um, actually, I was calling to ask, if I wanted to write a book,” says Destiny slowly. “How would I - how would I do that?” 

Lily falls down. She stands back up. She tries again. She doesn’t know she’s being watched. Destiny closes her eyes. 

End.


End file.
